Beautiful Women

Five women show up to audition for a crappy low-budget erotic thriller, then decide to blow it off, embarking instead on a day and night of fun and adventure. Writer-director Sathyan Ramesh's 2003 debut feature has loads of smart, acerbic dialogue, and its 24-hour structure lends the proceedings a sense of real time. While the film gets bogged down by some improbable plot twists and the contrivance that each character has a major secret to unload, this is partly compensated for by the wonderful camaraderie of the quintet, whose laughter and tears are believable responses to their personal crises. With Floriane Daniel, Julia Jaeger, Caroline Peters, Clelia Sarto, and Ulrike Tscharre. In German with subtitles. 86 min.
ByJoshua Katzman